The meeting between the three of us was truly affecting—Corporal Reeves’ companions were all members of the Army taken at Saratoga, chiefly men of the Twentieth and Fourteenth Regiments, but there were two others of The Ninth. They told of their long march from the pen at Rutland, during which they had suffered very great hardships. On their arrival they had been informed that they were not expected to arrive until the Spring, and thereupon led into a wood where were a few log huts in the course of construction, but unroofed and filled with snow. The provisions were very bad, with only a little maize-flour and no meat or rum: to keep themselves warm the soldiers had drunk hot water in which red peppers had been steeped. They had lived a most miserable life for the last year and a half, the huts being made miserable by a plague of rats of enormous size. By sickness and desertion The Ninth, Terry said, was reduced to about sixty men; the inordinate drinking of cheap spirits had accounted for above a score. They had lately been ordered up to Little York in Pennsylvania. It was at the same time decided that their officers, in further violation of the Convention, were to be removed from them. When Terry Reeves heard this, he had asked permission of the American Colonel Cole, at whose plantation he had been working as a mechanic, to stay behind. A regiment without officers, Terry held, was no longer a regiment. Besides, the climate of Virginia was more agreeable to naked and hungry men than that of the Northern and Middle States; and Colonel Cole had behaved in a gentlemanly fashion. These other men had obtained the same permission from their masters. Terry told me that he was sorry now not to have joined Smutchy and myself in our escape from Hopewell; however, the war was not yet over and he hoped to strike another blow for his King and Country. He mentioned that the person who had done most for The Ninth in settling disputes, in organizing amusements and profitable labours, and in a thousand other ways, had been Jane Crumer, who still remained very faithful to her poor innocent husband and was called ‘The Mother of the Regiment’.
Upon my warm recommendation of Terry Reeves to Captain Champagné, he was immediately taken upon the strength of the Regiment in his own rank. He had become a proficient horseman during his captivity and on our homeward journey that afternoon rode by my side, dressed in a captured Continental uniform and armed with two fine pistols taken from a dead officer. The other men were also incorporated in the Regiment, which with the sick and wounded now returned to duty, and a small draft, was brought up to the strength of about two hundred and fifty officers and men.
Our route was more southerly, down the valley of the Rivanna. Two of the captured Assembly-men rode close behind us, conversing with the Captain. They seemed relieved at the courteous treatment that they received and were very frank about the war. They said that the American cause was now at its last gasp, with the Congress armies unpaid, ill-fed and mutinous, the statesmen and officers of the North and South at odds, and the British raids upon the more prosperous parts of the country most crippling in their effect.
‘It all turns now upon this,’ said one of them, very earnestly, ‘whether your people can prevent the intended co-operation between the French fleet and army and ours before the fall of the year. Hitherto the French have been a hindrance rather than a help, from raising hopes which they have always continually disappointed. They hold it against us that they have been disappointed in the shipments of tobacco, rice and indigo that they hoped from us in exchange for the muskets they sent. But that was no fault of ours. The vigilance of your fleet and the destructive raids of that traitor Arnold have prevented us from fulfilling our obligations. However, it is possible that they will respond to the pressing appeal now made to them, and then we shall see. But it is now crack and crack how matters turn; and let me tell you fairly, Sir, that if once more the French prove, like Egypt, a broken reed, then the jig is over. We Virginians at least will gladly dissolve our alliance with them and enter into honourable treaty with Great Britain. For, by God, we are now in a bad box.’
We came back safe, with no more adventure to myself than a rotten old pine suddenly crashing down in front of my horse, which, like myself, was sleepy from weariness and the hot sun. The woods hereabouts were full of such old rascals tottering with the slightest breeze.
CHAPTER XIV
No other event of remarkable interest took place during the whole of that summer. More public stores were taken and destroyed at various towns through which we passed, but Lord Cornwallis durst not lead us up into the Middle provinces without reinforcements. He hoped that Sir Henry Clinton would now evacuate New York and join him in Virginia, using Portsmouth or some other nearer seaport for a base. But Sir Henry was aware that the French had at last listened to the appeal of Congress—who were totally bankrupt and forced to obtain supplies by bills of impress, since nobody would accept their bills of credit—and were sending to their aid chests of coin, a fleet of overpowering size and a considerable army. General Washington called upon the country for one last effort to refill his depleted ranks, and now proposed with French help to drive Sir Henry out of New York, where were less than four thousand men. Sir Henry therefore ordered Lord Cornwallis to abandon his operations in Virginia and send every man he could spare to succour New York.
We had passed through the town of Richmond and were now encamped at Williamsburgh, an ancient place by American standards, lying in a plain between the James and York Rivers. It was a pretty place of three streets, with neat white houses surrounding a green, in the English style. Here was the University College of William and Mary, of which the Bishop of Virginia was president—a heavy building like a brick-kiln; and the former Capitol of Virginia, a spacious brick edifice, in the hall of which stood the statue of a former Regal Governor, the head and one arm knocked off by Revolutionaries. There was also a hospital here for lunatics, but it appeared ill-regulated.
On receiving these new orders, Lord Cornwallis, though he would have preferred to return to South Carolina to assist Lord Rawdon, left Williamsburgh and marched us down towards Portsmouth. The Marquis de La Fayette who finding himself unpursued when we halted at Hanover, had returned to harass us, now tried to cut off our rear-guard during our crossing of the James River. Lord Cornwallis allowed our piquets to be driven in, to encourage the Marquis, and then with a counter-attack completely routed him and took two guns. This engagement, in which I had no part, took place near Jamestown, famous as the first settlement made by the English in Virginia. But no sooner had we crossed the river than another express arrived from Sir Henry, asking instead for three thousand troops to assist him in a raid through New Jersey on the enemy magazines at Philadelphia. We continued our march to Portsmouth. On our way we skirted the great Dismal Swamp, which extended southward into North Carolina and occupied about one hundred and fifty thousand acres. In the interior were large herds of wild cattle, the descendants of cattle lost on being turned into the swamp to feed, also indigenous bears, wolves, deer and, more remarkable, wild white men who were lost there as children and were perfect beasts. The swamp and its neighbourhood were remarkably healthy, and the water of a medicinal quality sovereign against fevers and bilious complaints: it was of the colour of brandy and tasted strongly of the juniper, a tree which abounded in it. Before the war, a very great quantity of barrel-staves had been cut and shaped on the swamp by negroes in the employment of The Dismal Swamp Company, but the work was carried on from Norfolk, close to Portsmouth, which was burned down in the second year of the war by order of the Regal Governor, and the enterprise abandoned. In that single burning £300,000 worth of damage was done; and even this was a very small part of the material loss incurred by the province because of the war. War was ever an expensive luxury to any nation but to such poor carnivores as the Huns and Vikings who had little to lose and much to gain.
When we arrived at Portsmouth, three thousand of us were duly embarked on transports for New York; but, just as we were putting out to sea, still another express arrived from Sir Henry to prevent our sailing. Lord Cornwallis was to keep the whole of his forces and ret
urn to Williamsburgh. There based, he was to fortify an adjacent harbour, where our larger ships could lie under cover of shore batteries, either at Old Point Comfort or Hampton Roads. Sir Henry’s change of plan was due to a direct command from Lord George Germaine that not a single man was to be withdrawn from Virginia. Lord Cornwallis, disgusted with this continual chopping and changing, visited the two ports mentioned, taking his Engineer with him; but found that for geographical reasons they did not answer Sir Henry’s purpose. We therefore were taken in the transports down the estuary of the James River and then by sea into the York River. Here, at a little distance from the mouth, where the stream suddenly narrowed to less than a mile across and ran five fathoms deep, were two ports, opposite to each other—Gloucester on the northern and York Town on the southern bank. These Lord Cornwallis believed, though they had faults, would correspond better with Sir Henry’s requirements. He evacuated Portsmouth, an unhealthy and inconvenient station, at the end of August. A large number of Loyalists and their families, who had taken refuge in Portsmouth, could not be left behind there to the fury of the returning Revolutionaries; and were brought with us into Gloucester and York Town.
York Town, to which the Royal Welch Fusiliers went, contained about two hundred houses, a few taverns and stores, a jail and a church. The church was Episcopalian, the common religious persuasion in Virginia. Religion, however, had been totally interrupted by the war, the clergy being Loyalists, and the English bishops patriotically refusing to ordain Revolutionaries in their place. The churches, never well attended, had been allowed to fall into ruin. This did not greatly discommode the Virginians, I believe. Most of the gentry, including General Washington and Mr. Jefferson, were little better than Deists, and the lower orders quite pagan. The fact was that General Washington, on first assuming his command, had forbidden the clergy to offer prayers for their Sovereign and Royal Family. He had asseverated that he was ‘disposed to indulge the professors of Christianity with that road to Heaven which to them shall seem the most direct, plainest, easiest and least liable to exception’; but to sanction prayers for the Monarchy to which he was so inveterate did not suit his humour. Of near a hundred incumbents in Virginia, no more than twenty-eight, being Whiggishly inclined, or trimmers, remained in their parishes throughout the war. It was the same story in all other provinces of America. I heard tell of one parson, the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, at Annapolis in Maryland, who while the Revolution was first brewing preached always with a brace of loaded pistols on the cushion before him, chastening ‘all silly clowns and illiterate mechanics who take upon them to censure their Prince’. One day the mob set a brawny blacksmith to waylay and beat him. In the event, the priest of God struck down the priest of Vulcan with a single punch below the ear, which earned him the admiration even of his foes. Yet he took no pride in this victory, and when the day came when he could continue no more in his cure, he told the people of Annapolis: ‘You shall see my face no more among you, brethren. For so long as I live I shall cry with Zadok the priest, and with Nathan the prophet—GOD SAVE THE KING!’
At York Town, swamps drained by creeks lay on either side of the town, which was built along a slight cliff above the river; between them was half a mile of firm ground. These swamps were covered with red cedars and pine-trees, and an important industry hereabouts had been burning them for tar. The felled trees were simply heaped in a shallow pit, and the tar, running out, was later gathered up, cleared of the charcoal mixed with it, and put into barrels. Most of the tar-makers, however, had quitted the country, and no labour was anywhere to be had for fortifying York Town. We soldiers must rely upon our own exertions. The task was rendered very disagreeable because of the sultry weather, and the ground being baked exceedingly hard. We had but four hundred tools for the work, half of which were unserviceable. Sir Henry Clinton indeed ordered a great quantity of picks and shovels to be sent to us from New York, but these had not arrived. In the whole neighbourhood no more were procurable; for the agricultural work hereabouts was done with hoes.
At the very end of August, in a fatal moment which may be said to have turned the wavering scale of fortune in favour of the Americans, the French Admiral, Count de Grasse, arrived in the Chesapeak Bay with twenty-eight ships of the line. The sight was mortifying and astonishing to us, for five days before our Admiral Hood had been in those waters with fourteen ships, but, not finding the Frenchmen there, had sailed off to join Admiral Thomas Graves at New York. Admiral Hood had been positive that de Grasse would not bring with him more than ten ships—yet here was the best part of the French fleet!
Count de Grasse surprised two British frigates anchored in the mouth of York River, taking one and driving the other upstream beyond us. Then four of his frigates sailed past us, convoying a large force of French soldiers to join the Marquis de La Fayette at Williamsburgh; they went by night and we could not stop them with fire from our batteries. A week later we heard a cannonade from the sea. It was Admiral Graves who had sailed from New York with eighteen ships in order to intercept another French fleet of eight ships and a convoy of military stores and heavy artillery, that had slipped out of Newport, Rhode Island, and was thought to be coming our way. Instead of these eight ships of war, he found Count de Grasse with four-and-twenty, and immediately attempted to engage him; but, from the wind and other circumstances, he could not force the enemy to a battle which he preferred to decline. Our ships suffered some damage and Admiral Graves returned to New York to refit and fetch assistance. In his absence the eight ships from Newport arrived with their important convoy.
Lord Cornwallis would now dearly have loved to go out against the Marquis de La Fayette and his five thousand men. But he considered it wiser to employ us in improving our position, since his orders were to provide a secure base for the British fleet: true, our united squadrons would be inferior to the enemy, but the British had often before fought at a great numerical disadvantage and gained the victory. We therefore continued at our work of entrenchment, but because of the same scarcity of tools we made slow progress. We were unable to do more than raise an inner line of defences with parapet and stockade, which were to be protected at some distance forward by three redoubts. Other posts covered the passages through the swamps, including the road to Williamsburgh, which followed the bank of the river. The soil, when we broke through the hard outer crust, was very light and more suitable for the growth of cotton than for the construction of ramparts; we eyed it with mistrust. The defences at Gloucester across the river were completed in a shorter time, the earth lending itself more agreeably to military purposes.
News now came that General Washington, who had so long been immobile with his army on the Highlands of Hudson’s River, had moved at last. He was coming down against us with a large army, paid in hard money from the French military chest, to which was joined the French army from Rhode Island: in all eighteen thousand men, to swell La Fayette’s five thousand. But we remembered the successful defence of Savannah against a similar combination of arms, and consequently feared nothing. On September 28th, York Town was invested by the enemy, who camped at a distance of two miles away, General Washington’s men facing the open half-mile between the swamps. Unfortunately our three advanced redoubts were not yet completed. We marched out to meet the enemy and formed in open ground, between these poor works, but he would not give battle. The next day we were pleased to hear that a message had come for Lord Cornwallis from Sir Henry Clinton, who, finding that Washington had slipped away from Hudson’s River, undertook to sail to our relief on October 5th, with twenty-six ships of war and five thousand men.
Since the unfinished redoubts were untenable against heavy artillery, Lord Cornwallis withdrew us to the inner line, which we continued industriously to improve. The enemy occupied the positions that we had left. Half of the Regiment had been sent out along the Williamsburgh road on the extreme right, where assisted by a force of forty Marines they held the star-shaped advance redoubt on the cliff beyond the creek. Oppose
d to them was a French division under the Count de St. Simon. These felt the defences of the redoubt but were driven off by a salvo of grape. Forty more of our mounted men skirmished across the York River under Colonel Tarleton against the French Hussars, or rather Lancers, of the Duke de Lanzun. The rest of us, myself included, were on fatigue duty in the town, which was excessively crowded. Over six thousand troops, and perhaps three thousand civilians, were cramped into a space about five hundred paces in breadth, by twelve hundred in length. Sickness soon broke out and raged through the camp, the sanitary conveniences of the town being very bad, and the weather continuing hot.
Orders came to my company on the morning of October 4th, to attend Lieutenant Sutherland, now the Chief Engineer, on the cliff above the river, where he set us to excavating a deep bomb-proof magazine. We worked at this task for a couple of days, and erected a wooden framework to support the roof. On the third afternoon the Earl of Cornwallis came himself to supervise the task, and criticized a few particulars. I overheard him instructing Lieutenant Sutherland, who came with him, how the window embrasure was to be cut overlooking the river, and how the stairway was to run. ‘It is to be hung with green baize,’ said his Lordship, ‘which I will provide; and do you see that there is width on the stair for bringing down the bed, the poudreuse and the large armoire.’ I cocked up my ears then; for this was clearly not to be a magazine for storing ammunition but a safe retreat for some lady. Two years before the Earl of Cornwallis had lost his beautiful wife, to whom he was greatly attached, and though at Charleston he had rejected the rather shameless advances of many Tory ladies, it was rumoured that at Portsmouth he had fallen in love with a beautiful Irishwoman, lately arrived from New York, and brought her here with him. However, his Lordship had been so discreet in this affair that nobody knew for certain who she might be.
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